US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said that if nine (of 30) power stations were compromised, the US would be in a blackout for three weeks to 18 months.

The fact that we live in a digital society is not news to anyone reading this. Also not news is that digital machines consume electricity. As promised, Left To Survive stays away from the right-wing tin foil hat paranoia, but have you considered what life in the United States would be like if our power grid was taken down for a few weeks to a year? Not just at your house or place of employment, but everywhere. Think about all the ways that would impact your daily routine from communication (radio, TV, internet) to how hot your house would get if this happened on July 4th.

Now imagine what this might do to hospitals and 911 call centers. Emergency services do have backup systems in place, but they don’t always function as they were designed to as was the case in a Washington DC 911 call center.

How much cash do you have in your home? Grocery stores may still have their old-school credit card imprint machine, or maybe they’d be cash only, or maybe with all of the looters it’d be irrelevant.

​So is this a real threat or tin foil hat?

US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) said that if nine (of 30) power stations were comprised, the US would be in a blackout for three weeks to 18 months. LINK

Gunmen attacked an electrical substation in San Jose back in 2014. LINK

ISIS is currently attacking power companies (luckily they’re bad at it). LINK

This is one reason the hand cranked radio is on the emergency kit list. You’ll need to stay up to date on what is happening, and where to go for emergency services. If the cell towers are still operational, your iPhone will be dead in a few days which is why a small solar panel charger is on the emergency list. Lastly, if you or a loved one is dependent on machinery in the home such as a ventilator, make a plan on where you would go in the event of a power outage.

​So what regions in the United States are going to fare better? “If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited" says a report published in Nature. Oh great.

"Scientists trying to predict the consequences of climate change say that they see few havens from the storms, floods and droughts that are sure to intensify over the coming decades. But some regions, they add, will fare much better than others. Forget most of California and the Southwest (drought, wildfires). Ditto for much of the East Coast and Southeast (heat waves, hurricanes, rising sea levels). Washington, D.C., for example, may well be a flood zone by 2100, according to an estimate released last week."

It seems that the best region appears to be the Pacific Northwest or even Alaska: “The answer is the Pacific Northwest, and probably especially west of the Cascades,” said Ben Strauss, vice president for climate impacts and director of the program on sea level rise at Climate Central, a research collaboration of scientists and journalists. “Actually, the strip of coastal land running from Canada down to the Bay Area is probably the best,” he added. “You see a lot less extreme heat; it’s the one place in the West where there’s no real expectation of major water stress, and while sea level will rise there as everywhere, the land rises steeply out of the ocean, so it’s a relatively small factor.”

Above is New Orleans at 2 meters of sea level rise (6.6 ft people). This is a realistic expectation by year 2100. Yes, this shows basically New Orleans underwater.

Just for fun, the estimate is that by 2500, 13 meters (42 feet) of sea level is likely. Portland Oregon with 13 meters of sea level rise puts the Portland International Airport underwater. Though, by that time, hopefully the US will accept that this is really happening and some sort of 50 foot wall is built around the city. Or maybe we've just abandoned it altogether and are living on Mars or Alaska.

So the coasts will have rising waters threatening survival and the inlands will have a megadrought?

What's a megadrought you might ask: "Megadroughts are sustained periods of sparse precipitation and significant loss of soil moisture that span generations, about 10 times as long as a normal three-year drought."

Based on models conducted by NASA, Cornell and Columbia, "there is an 80 percent chance that such an extended drought will strike between 2050 and 2099, unless world governments act aggressively to mitigate impacts from climate change, the researchers said."

So a megadrought is just like the drought California is going through, except it'll last thirty years.